In contrast to this ironclad narrative of the white Riot Grrrl, black women did participate in the movement...

But for all the struggling to distill what Riot Grrrl was and remains in the past and present, there's one thing that can be agreed on: Somewhere among the grafs remembering "revolution grrrl now!" the history of Riot Grrrl is inevitably written as "predominately white," glossing over the contributions of black women and other women of color.

Continue reading the post Alternatives to Alternatives: the Black Grrrls Riot Ignored  on Vice.

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It was disheartening to see how few of the stories in the annals of the Riot Grrrl Collection were by black women. But as I was looking at the history of Riot Grrrl in front of me I was left wondering: Where was the alternative to the alternative?

Few and far between, maybe, but they participated nonetheless, and they deserve more than to be swept under a rug of whiteness. What's more, despite Fateman's apologetic assertions that punk and the punk aesthetic are white culture, there were black women who imbibed with the spirit of punk in their bones outside the Riot Grrrl movement as well. These women carved their own feminist pathways into the hardcore scene, precisely because they were rendered invisible by the Riot Grrrl movement.

Continue reading the post Alternatives to Alternatives: the Black Grrrls Riot Ignored  on Vice.